Since its inception in the early 1900s, the Non-Destructive Inspection (herein after referred to as “NDI”) industry has utilized a variety of techniques and devices with the majority based on the well known and well documented techniques of magnetic flux leakage, magnetic particle, eddy-current, ultrasonic, radiation, such as x-ray and gamma ray, dye penetrant, and dimensional as well as visual and audible techniques. These techniques have been utilized alone or in combination with each other to address the specifics of the Material-Under-Inspection (herein after referred to as “MUI”). A list of typical MUI includes, but is not limited to engine components, rails, rolling stoke, oil country tubular goods, chemical plants, pipelines, bridges, structures, frames, cranes, aircraft, sea going vessels, drilling rigs, workover rigs, vessels, and the like.
Typically, the operation of the inspection equipment demands the undivided attention of the inspector while, at the same time, the inspection process may demand the inspector to focus on positioning and manipulating the inspection probe precisely or closely observing the MUI. A drawback of these techniques is that the inspection equipment must be physically separated a certain distance from the MUI thus the inspector cannot observe the MUI while operating the NDI equipment. Therefore, the overall inspection quality would be substantially improved if the inspector could focus entirely on the MUI while maintaining full control of the inspection equipment and the inspection process. This may be accomplished by adapting and fine-tuning the inspection equipment and its interface for interaction more adept to humans. Just as speech is a tool which allows communication while keeping one's hands free and one's attention focused on an elaborate task, adding a voice interface to the inspection equipment would preferably enable the inspector to focus on the MUI and the inspection process while maintaining full control of the inspection equipment. Further, the voice interaction preferably allows the inspector to operate the inspection equipment while wearing gloves or with dirty hands as he/she will not need to constantly physically manipulate the inspection equipment.